I think its been a long enough time to not be considered knee jerk anymore but, I think this sword is a tad bit overtuned, it has 120% total scaling, and 50% ice magic damage on hit (making it synergize with bloody palms), and its a katana on top of being better than most of the current swords.

I think bumping down the scaling will be all that is really needed, making it 60/40 SKI/STR would probably set it in line with other swords, I don't think I'll mention Yuki-jin since Sogensara is a 9 star and those tend to be incredibly elusive, but sure enough they'll start showing up more and more.

I already stated why, 120% scaling with 50% elemental atk on hit, Raijin typically finds itself getting really low SWA comparatively to other swords so it actually hasn't been a problem lately, and Tarnada is just good because its weapon stats are just 10% higher than everything else, but even Tarnada doesnt have 120% scaling with 50% elemental atk on hit.

I agree to the skill compensation part. Everblue is extremely situational.

But not in the form of dashing towards it, nah. I don't want to jump to a tree I froze.
-I rather just have it deal like 150% ice damage in it's path or something.
-Have the Ice statues generally be effected by Freeze talent and or Permafrost from Verglas(3 duration on the status is just way too short to tactically use them much.)
-OR keep the skill as it is, but if you use it on a person/plant object that isn't an enemy plant it only costs 1M.

So it would be more useable outside of the rare case of facing a doriad/ranger cherry blossom tree users.

Well a potential that helps using the Statues/frozen people would help aswell. Something like shattering them like tiny ice bombs in a 2-3 tile big area? That would be pretty cool.

I know we're in the middle of a trait rework and thats very important, but this is a very egregious and unfair weapon, its much more common these days and I see quite literally every kensei wanting to use a katana using it over anything else, average builds hit over 140-150 SWA on this thing, average builds that don't even spec too heavily into a damage stat and instead spec more into their defensive stats as a result.

I honestly think the biggest problem with it is that it does ice damage on hit as well, otherwise it would be comparable to the spine leash. I've seen builds with just gross amounts of ice stacking (100+) just for the Sogensara's on hit damage is as strong as possible, alongside the rest of its high as hell scaling. I genuinely think it's one of the strongest, if not THE strongest melee weapon in the game right now. You can accomplish far too much with it, and when you consider that the yukijin (an ice katana that does ice damage on hit) already exists, this is just a straight upgrade and removes any point in using the Yukijin.